Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, often described as the mastermind of 9/11, and four other prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay told a military judge on Monday that they wish to plead guilty to all charges.

Law professor Jonathan Turley sees this confession as a "strange alliance" between Mohammed and George W. Bush, where both men get what they want -- martyrdom in Mohammed's case and vindication in Bush's -- and President-elect Barack Obama is stuck in the middle with a dilemma on his hands.

Mohammed and the other accused terrorists first announced their plan to confess on November 4, which -- as MSNBC's Rachel Maddow pointed out in introducing Turley -- was "the day America elected a president who is expected to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and is expected to close the military tribunal system."

"Could it be that they want to beat the clock?" Maddow asked. "They want to make sure they are convicted, and probably executed, under Bush's tribunal system because that feels more like martyrdom to them than risking going into an actual non-kangaroo court trial in a real legal system?"